Tag Archives: Economics

An unprecedented land grab is taking place around the world. Fearing future food shortages or eager to profit from them, the world’s wealthiest and most acquisitive countries, corporations, and individuals have been buying and leasing vast tracts of land around the world. The scale is astounding: parcels the size of small countries are being gobbled up across the plains of Africa, the paddy fields of Southeast Asia, the jungles of South America, and the prairies of Eastern Europe. Veteran science writer Fred Pearce spent a year circling the globe to find out who was doing the buying, whose land was being taken over, and what the effect of these massive land deals seems to be.The Land Grabbers is a first-of-its-kind exposé that reveals the scale and the human costs of the land grab, one of the most profound ethical, environmental, and economic issues facing the globalized world in the twenty-first century. The corporations, speculators, and governments scooping up land cheap in the developing world claim that industrial-scale farming will help local economies. But Pearce’s research reveals a far more troubling reality. While some mega-farms are ethically run, all too often poor farmers and cattle herders are evicted from ancestral lands or cut off from water sources. The good jobs promised by foreign capitalists and home governments alike fail to materialize. Hungry nations are being forced to export their food to the wealthy, and corporate potentates run fiefdoms oblivious to the country beyond their fences.

Pearce’s story is populated with larger-than-life characters, from financier George Soros and industry tycoon Richard Branson, to Gulf state sheikhs, Russian oligarchs, British barons, and Burmese generals. We discover why Goldman Sachs is buying up the Chinese poultry industry, what Lord Rothschild and a legendary 1970s asset-stripper are doing in the backwoods of Brazil, and what plans a Saudi oil billionaire has for Ethiopia. Along the way, Pearce introduces us to the people who actually live on, and live off of, the supposedly “empty” land that is being grabbed, from Cambodian peasants, victimized first by the Khmer Rouge and now by crony capitalism, to African pastoralists confined to ever-smaller tracts.

Over the next few decades, land grabbing may matter more, to more of the planet’s people, than even climate change. It will affect who eats and who does not, who gets richer and who gets poorer, and whether agrarian societies can exist outside corporate control. It is the new battle over who owns the planet.

Are the natural resources available sufficient to feed a growing population? What are the priority areas where investment and research should be directed? How may the use of agricultural products in biofuel production affect markets? How can climate change affect production possibilities and markets? Around these questions, in 2009, FAO organized a High-Level Expert Meeting on How to Feed the World in 2050. This volume follows up on that initiative, by gathering updated versions of technical materials prepared for the occasion, along with further work. The book seeks to sustain the debate on the future of the global agricultural and food economy. Its contents were designed to interest both a technical audience and a wider range of professionals working around the world in areas related to agriculture, in both public and private institutions.

This book provides the most versatile introduction to e-business and e-commerce available. It is understandable by MBA, Masters and undergraduate students alike. It targets students who struggle with technology and converts them into people who aspire to work in the industry’ Ben Clegg Aston Business School ‘I strongly recommENDE-Business and E-Commerce Management to my students. It covers a wide range of e-business applications, offers a valuable selection of real-world cases and provides a bank of online resources that really help students to get the most from their course.’ Jenny Backhouse University of New South Wales, Australia ‘This is by far the best coverage on the subject and the companion website is unparalleled.’ Marc Macaluso Purdue University Calumet, USA Stay ahead! In today’s fast-paced world of continuous technological development and change you need to know the latest thinking on best practice for e-business.In the third EDITION of E-Business and E-Commerce Management, leading AUTHORity Dave Chaffey brings the most up-to-date academic thinking and professional practice together in one place. This bestselling text covers all aspects of e-business focusing on sales and marketing, as well as detailing procurement, supply chains, and the legal and security considerations. It has a range of features to help you learn effectively including margin definitions, international case studies, activities and web links. Here are just a few reasons why you should read E-Business and E-commerce Management: Learn from in-DEPTH cases on global organisations such as Amazon, the BBC and eBay, on regional companies such as Tesco.com and dabs.com, and on start-ups such as Northwest Supplies and Zopa.com Get the latest on new e-business technologies and ‘Web 2.0’ applications including blogging, Really Simple Syndication (RSS), instant messaging, podcasting, digital TV and mobile marketing Understand the challenges of security in the face of hacking, viruses, SPAM, identity theft, and the legal constraints on data protection, privacy and accessibility Keep up with cutting-edge e-marketing and E-CRM techniques, such as affiliate, search engine and viral marketing, and the use of ‘customer personas’ and value analysis Learn a structured approach to plan and implement, assess and improve e-business strategy for different types of organisation. Developed for students studying e-business and e-commerce at undergraduate or postgraduate level, and also used by many business managers, E-Business and E-Commerce Management is the essential text to keep pace with technology, strategy and implementation. Dave Chaffey (www.davechaffey.com) is an e-business consultant and visiting lecturer on e-business courses at Warwick University and Cranfield School of Management. (From Google Books)

This book is a reprint of the government’s Career Guide to Industries at a lower price. It is issued shortly after the Occupational Outlook Handbook (OOH) every two years and contains helpful information for job seekers on industry trends and cross-references to OOH job titles. The book covers more than 40 industries and includes the following information on each one: significant points, nature of the industry, working conditions, employment, occupations in the industry, training and advancement, earnings, outlook, and sources of additional information. Ideal for students and other people doing career research, people seeking jobs in new or unfamiliar industries, people interested in certain industries rather than particular jobs, and people with interests and job skills that are needed in many types of businesses. (From Google Books)

Are we too materialistic? Are we willfully trashing the planet in our pursuit of things? And what’s the source of all this frenetic consumer energy and desire anyway? In a fast-paced tour of the ecological and psychological terrain of American consumer culture, Shop ‘Til You Drop challenges us to confront these questions head-on. Taking aim at the high-stress, high-octane pace of fast-lane materialism, the film moves beneath the seductive surfaces of the commercial world to show how the flip side of accumulation is depletion — the slow, steady erosion of both natural resources and basic human values. In the end, Shop ‘Til You Drop helps us make sense of the economic turbulence of the moment, providing an unflinching, riveting look at the relationship between the limits of consumerism and our never-ending pursuit of happiness.

Wendell Potter is the insurance industry’s worst nightmare. In June 2009, Wendell Potter made national headlines with his scorching testimony before the Senate panel on health care reform. This former senior VP of CIGNA explained how health insurers make promises they have no intention of keeping, how they flout regulations designed to protect consumers, and how they skew political debate with multibillion-dollar PR campaigns designed to spread disinformation. Potter had walked away from a six-figure salary and two decades as an insurance executive because he could no longer abide the routine practices of an industry where the needs of sick and suffering Americans take a backseat to the bottom line. The last straw: when he visited a rural health clinic and saw hundreds of people standing in line in the rain to receive treatment in stalls built for livestock. In Deadly Spin, Potter takes readers behind the scenes to show how a huge chunk of our absurd healthcare spending actually bankrolls a propaganda campaign and lobbying effort focused on protecting one thing: profits. Whatever the fate of the current health care legislation, it makes no attempt to change that fundamental problem.
Potter shows how relentless PR assaults play an insidious role in our political process anywhere that corporate profits are at stake—from climate change to defense policy. Deadly Spin tells us why—and how—we must fight back. (From Google Books)

For all of fur’s contentious position in American culture today, historian Eric Jay Dolin shows its centrality in our nation’s ever-surprising history. He argues that the trade in animal skins turned colonial America into a tumultuous frontier where global powers battled for control. From the seventeenth century right on up to the Gilded Age, the developed world’s appetite for fur made the new continent, with its wealth of fur-bearing wildlife, a seemingly inexhaustible resource. The result was a major boost in the evolution of the colonies into a powerful new player on the world stage. Dolin sheds insight on the ways the fur trade created international tensions–in New England, the Great Lakes, and in the expanding West. Fur traders were often the first white men to map major rivers, forests, and mountains, then soon pushed Native Americans off their lands as John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company attempted to monopolize the West.–From publisher description.